Second,
I was quoted in the newest issue of the scientific Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. Nothing scientific on my part I assure you. I would have
guessed that my lifetime chances of ever being quoted in a scientific
journal were more infinitesimal than some quantum particles, but I
tend to have some sort of probability-altering field at work in my
life, so...

Anyway,
it came about like this. The author of the piece, Lynne Robinson, writes for the Journal
of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.
In every issue, in addition to abstracts and articles with titles
like A
Materiomics Approach to Spider Silk: Protein Molecules to Webs
and Tailoring
Microstructure and Properties of Hierarchical Aluminum Metal Matrix
Composites Through Friction Stir Processing
(real titles... trust me, I couldn't make this up), they try to
include a more fun and interesting piece. Lynne discovered that many
of the scientists she worked with were comics geeks (imagine that),
who were genuinely interested in the transforming some of the ideas
in comics into real life science. Things like Captain America's
shield and Iron Man's armor were of specific interest to them. She
wanted to talk about how fiction, specifically Comics and Science
Fiction, both influence and reflect the development of new
technologies. As she wrote the article she realized that she simply
didn't have the background knowledge of comics and comics history, so
she cast about to find someone who did. She contacted the PittsburghToonseum, and they recommended she talk to me.

I
spent about an hour and a half on the phone with Lynne last fall and
covered a lot of ground. She was fun to talk to and genuinely
interested in the topic. As a journalist, her style was remarkable.
She asked really very good questions and zeroed in on some of the
most important points in my sometimes rambling style of talking. I'm
really happy with the way the article turned out and proud to have
been included. There were a lot of things in the conversation that
didn't make it into the article (Doc Magnus and the Metal Men, Jack
Kirby and the New Gods and how we all carry Mother Boxes in our
pockets and have Metron Chairs at home).

Out
of literally hundreds of articles they could have chosen, my piece on
Matt Wagner's Mage:
The Hero Discovered
is one of ten free sample entries available on the order page, along with pieces on Watchmen, Sandman and other more well-known books. The editors either really liked Mage or my writing. I'm kind of stupidly happy that they picked my article. The
direct link to the pdf of it is
http://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/Mage.pdf.

I
was planning on writing about Mage
in my ongoing favorite comics posts anyway. I still will, in a less
academic form than this article.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

This
is a follow-up to my previous post on the comic book series, Grendel.

Matt
Wagner finished his run on the original Grendel series with
War Child, though both Hunter Rose and Grendel-Prime appeared
in team-up books with Batman in the early 90's (the first one of
which was released on the exact same day that Grey Legacy #1
appeared). He has since created several new Hunter Rose stories in
various miniseries. But, for the most part, the main story of Grendel
was through.

By
the end of the series though, Wagner had created a world with a vast
history, with room for a lot of untold stories. He decided to allow
other creators to play in his universe. Over the course of several
years readers were treated to a series of miniseries called Grendel
Tales. Each story was written and drawn by someone other than
Wagner, but set in the world of Grendel. The quality of these varied,
but there was some stellar work by a number of people who went on to
continue to work in the industry, James Robinson of Starman
fame among them (he's also the writer on DC's upcoming Earth Two
series).

I'm
not going to discuss these in detail, though I will say they are
worth reading if you're into the Grendel mythos. For more info check
out the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel_Tales#Grendel_Tales.
As a footnote, I'll mention that I had a review of Grendel: Devil
May Care published in the nationally distributed magazine Kulture
Deluxe.

As
I've mentioned before, Fred and I were sending Grey Legacy
mini-comics to Wagner on a pretty regular basis. Matt always wrote
back with encouragement. He was always good at giving newcomers a
foot in the door. Many of his collaborators on Grendel and
Grendel Tales were unknown at the time.

Apparently
our comic impressed him enough that he asked us to submit a proposal
for a Grendel Tales series. We were pretty ecstatic, as you
might imagine. He sent us a copy of the “Grendel Bible,” which contained his guidelines for the universe and the types of submissions he
was looking for.

We
pretty much put everything else aside and got to work. We
brainstormed a lot of ideas and eventually came up with a story we
liked. I'm not going to post the entire thing here (that would take
too much digging through the archives and scanning, and besides, I
think there is still the core of a good story there, even if we took
the Grendel elements out. It may appear in a wildly mutated form
someday). But, in brief...

In
the wilderness and ruins of what had been the eastern United States
an uneasy alliance of humans and vampires begin to follow the
peaceful teachings of a young charismatic mystic named Huck. This
becomes a movement that begins to migrate west and eventually comes
into conflict with the empire of the Grendel Khan. We used the
symbolism of Baptism pretty overtly. Wagner's vampires were subject
to the classic weakness of running water, so as a symbol of pain and
sacrifice this worked really well. The story was an exploration of
the ideas of religion, faith, tolerance for others, and peaceful
coexistence set against the backdrop of a world based on the spirit
of violence.

We
plotted this out as a six issue series. We did a bunch of character
designs. Like most of my collaboration with Fred, a lot of the
specifics are lost in terms of exactly who did what. In general, our
working style was that I tended to come up with the larger
plot lines and themes and characters, and then Fred would refine
them and point out the holes in my story. That's really an oversimplification, and there was a lot of
back and forth brainstorming during this process. The final character
presentational pieces we sent with our proposal were penciled by Fred
and inked by me. I've posted them here, for the first time anywhere...

This is Huck (named after the Nick Cave song, Saint Huck), our young mystic
and the main protagonist of our story. The man in the background is Huck's teacher
and the former shaman of their community.

This is Huck's older brother (I can't remember his name). He tired
of the provincial life and left home to join the Grendel corps in the west.

These two are part of the vampire coven who live near Huck's human settlement and become part of the human/vampire coalition. The first is Petra Moon, a former Grendel who had been turned into a vampire. The second is Haller, the leader of the vampire community, and Huck's greatest supporter.

These are other vampires of Haller's group (yes, that's a ruined Pittsburgh skyline behind them).

Our
timing couldn't have been worse. We received a post card from Matt
telling us he had received our materials, and while he liked them,
the copyright to Grendel and Mage were coming under
dispute. I don't know all of the details, but the original publisher,
Comico, had been bought out and the new owners believed that meant
they now had the rights to everything Comico had published. The
original creators for Comico believed that they had always been
published with idea of creator rights in place, meaning they all
owned their own work. This legal battle went on for years and Matt
was unable to publish any Grendel or Mage-related material. The good
news is that in the end, Wagner and the others all triumphed and
regained their rights. The bad news, for us anyway, is that by the
time this happened the comics industry had moved on and there was no
call for new Grendel Tales stories (and we had come to the end
of our Grey Legacy experience and weren't doing comics by this
point either). Matt eventually told new tales of Hunter Rose, and
Mage: The Hero Defined, the second in his proposed Mage trilogy
finally appeared.

We
were disappointed, of course. This is one of the great
“Might-Have-Beens” in my life. But timing is everything, and life
moves on.

As
a final anecdote about this... Sometime in the early 90's I went to
Mid-Ohio Con in Mansfield, Ohio to shop around my inking samples
(this was around the time I got work from Malibu Graphics). Bob
Schreck was there. Bob was, at the time, an editor for Dark Horse
Comics and Wagner's brother-in-law (he was married at the time to
Dark Horse editor Diana Schutz, sister of Matt's wife). He was on the
list of people I wanted to show my portfolio to. When he came to the
Grendel pages he started laughing. “Hey,” he said, “I've seen
these before, in Matt's living room!”

He
was very complimentary of my work, but at the time Dark Horse wasn't
hiring freelance inkers. Ah well...

Both
Matt and Bob have always been very friendly and remembered me on the
few occasions we have met since.

All Grendel related concepts and images are copyright Matt Wagner. The other characters are copyright Wayne Wise and Fred Wheaton.

Monday, March 19, 2012

I
introduced the topic of my favorite comics by saying that I wanted to
talk about the ones that were “heart” books, those that resonated
with my feelings more than my thoughts. However, as I think about the
books I was most into, those that were influential in the way I think
about comics storytelling, and more importantly, those that served as
some sort of inspiration, I realize that it's a bit more complicated
than that. For the most part, this series is still going to be about
the “heart” books, but there are a couple of exceptions that have
cropped up.

Chief
among them, and the one that made me rethink my original goals with
these blog posts, was Grendel, by Matt Wagner. Grendel
was a book I loved, but it is certainly not one that inspires the
warm fuzzies that Zot! or Beanworld do (or several of the
others that will eventually appear on this list). Grendel was
a book that was dark, and full of pretty extreme violence. You
know... the kind of book that I really don't typically read much of
these days. Grendel stands apart from most of my favorite
books in this way. In general, I'm not a fan of gratuitous violence
and graphic gore. But, the key word in that last sentence is
gratuitous. If you have read any of my novels, you know that do not
shy away from graphic violence if I believe it is necessary for the
story. What I'm not a fan of is violence for violence sake, violence
as voyeuristic pornography. If violence is part of a story it needs
to have a reason.

The
violence in Grendel
never felt gratuitous, at least to me. Grendel
was a meditation on the nature of violence. As dark as the story
sometimes became, Grendel
was always an exploration of the the theme of violence. It always
asked questions. “What are the underlying causes of violence?”
“What circumstances would lead an otherwise normal person to
extreme acts of violence?” “What is it about darkness that we
find so appealing?” “What does it mean to live in a culture that
celebrates and indoctrinates us into violence while at the same time
desensitizing us to it?”

None
of these questions were asked overtly, but they were implied by the
narrative.

I
first saw Grendel in the early 80's in an ad for four new comics from a
new Black and White publisher called Comico. The other three didn't
really spark my interest very much at the time, but there was
something about this character called Grendel. It was a simple black
mask, with white designs over the eyes.

The stripes over the eyes
probably reminded me of the pattern of Alice Cooper's eye makeup. But
I'm pretty sure that it was the white circle on the nose that won me
over. This tiny detail gave the mask a harlequin-like appearance. It
was a clown's nose. This mix of the evil-looking eyes with the hint
of the absurd worked for me. It was the mix of comedy and tragedy, an
iconic representation of the idea of laughter in the face of
darkness, and of how suddenly laughter can turn to tears.

Grendel
first appeared in Comico Primer
#2, an anthology title.

To this day I have never owned a copy of this book (though I have read reprints of the story).

He graduated into
his own title, the first run of which lasted three issues. I picked
all three of these up at one time.

This
series told the story of Hunter Rose, the first Grendel. Hunter was a
wealthy and famous author by day, and in the guise of Grendel, the
ultra-violent leader of organized crime by night. He had an arrogant
swagger. His ruthlessness was coupled with erudition and humor. This
was no simple thug. The written complexity and duality of the
character met the promise held in that brilliantly designed mask.
Wagner was young and new to the business of comics, and his art style
was raw and undeveloped. Many of his figures were crude, and his ink
line did not have the control he would eventually master. But there
was something about it that really clicked with me. As crude as his
actual drawings may have been, there was a sense of design, pacing,
and storytelling that promised great things.

The
series was cancelled after three issues and Grendel next appeared in
full color as a backup feature in the pages of Wagner's next series,
Mage: The Hero Discovered (about which I will have a whole lot
more to say in another blog). Wagner went back to Hunter Rose and
began his story again, this time told in a series of art
deco-inspired, beautifully designed pages accompanied by text.

It can
be said that this story was not “Comics” per se, but an
illustrated story. Whatever you want to call it, we saw the life
story of Hunter Rose unfold to its inevitable, tragic conclusion.
This story was eventually collected under the title Devil By the
Deed.

But
that wasn't the end of Grendel. The series came back, in full color
with a new #1. In the first story we are introduced to Christine
Spar, the daughter of Hunter's ward, Stacy. Though written by Wagner,
the art was done by The Pander Brothers. In this story we see
Christine, a normal woman, driven to acts of extreme violence by the
abduction of her son.

She eventually dons the mask of Grendel and we
see the first hint that Grendel is something much larger than Hunter
Rose, or any one person. Though never made explicit in any of the many stories that
follow, Grendel is the spirit of violence. It is a manifestation of
our own darkest nature. In the case of Christine, it starts with a
noble motivation: to protect her child. But the line between the
warrior who protects and the monster who takes joy in slaughter can
be a thin one.

As
the series progresses the nature of Grendel changes with it.
Christine's lover, Brian Li Sung, is seduced by the spirit of Grendel
as well (in an arc drawn by Bernie Mireault), and his tale is more
sad than tragic.

Over
time the series moves far into the future. In a world controlled by
religious fanaticism, madman Eppy Thatcher dons the mask of Grendel
to bring down a system that he sees as a corruption of his pure
faith. Eppy communes with his visions of Grendel, and like Joan of
Arc, believes he is acting on divine inspiration.

More
time passes, and the image of Grendel becomes part of culture.
Grendel can no longer be contained by a single person, but has become
a motivating icon. An elite band of samurai-like soldiers, known as
Grendels, arise to wield power. In the last story arc of the original
series, Orion Assante rises from their ranks and becomes ruler of the
world, The Grendel Khan.

This
was followed by Grendel: War Child, a twelve issue series that
focused on the young son of Orion, Jupiter Assante, and the war
machine/cyborg killing machine designed to protect him,
Grendel-Prime.

Each
story arc was drawn by a different art team, in order to give each
character a look and feel distinct from the others. Over the course
of forty issues Wagner expanded his universe and dealt with huge
issues. There was a central concept to lead the reader forward, but
not a central character. The art and storytelling was, at times, very
experimental and challenging. The stories and characterization were
complex, and everything had consequences.

Eventually,
the concept of Grendel outgrew Wagner. He had introduced an idea that
spanned centuries of time. If Grendel was an idea that possessed many
people, Wagner decided to allow it to possess other artists. This was
an idea he had already established by having different artists on the
book. He expanded this idea by introducing a series of miniseries
called Grendel Tales, where other writers and artists could
take the concept and play in his sandbox.

Fred
and I almost had the chance to participate in this, but that's a story for the next blog.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Of
all of the comics from my past that I love, the one I have the
toughest time convincing anyone to read is Tales of the Beanworld
by Larry Marder. I get it. I really do. I was just as dismissive of
it when I first saw the images and ads in other comics I was reading.
Even when Scott McCloud, in the letters pages of Zot!
recommended it highly, I still ignored it (and if you read my last
post you'll know that I should have learned that lesson with Zot!
itself). On the surface this weird little comic looks like nothing
more than stick figures. On closer examination, not only do they seem
to be stick figures, but the whole thing just seems... weird. Silly.
Stupid even. Marder's tagline for the series acknowledges this. He
referred to Beanworld as “A most peculiar comic book
experience.”

That
pretty much sums it up.

But
it's wonderful. It's not for everyone, I'll give you that. But if you
give it a chance, look past what you believe to be limited art and a
silly premise, it is filled with grand ideas, wonder, and a
tremendous amount of fun. I ignored and dismissed it for it's entire
original run (21 issues from Eclipse Comics, from 1985 until 1993). I
read good reviews of it in a variety of sources, but I just couldn't
get past my prejudice about what I thought the series was.

In
1993 Fred and I went to a convention in Philadelphia to promote Grey
Legacy (I've recounted my meeting with Scott McCloud at this
convention elsewhere on this blog). Larry Marder was set up right
next to McCloud in Artist's Alley, selling copies of the first trade
paperback collection of Tales of the Beanworld. He was
incredibly nice and said very positive things about our comic. He
gave me a Beanworld action figure, a dry Lima bean with a face
drawn on it. Before the weekend was over I decided to try and get
over my prejudice and give his book a chance. I bought the TP from
him, got it signed, then went back to our motel room and read it.
I've been a convert ever since.

So,
you ask, what is Beanworld about? That's really difficult to
describe. It is a most peculiar comic book experience, after all.
It's about ecology and living in harmony with the world. It's about
mythology and symbolism. It's about the world, and finding your place in
it. It's about art and music and the need to balance personal
identity with living in a society. All told with “stick
figures” in what Larry Marder refers to as “two and a half
dimensions.” He talks about this and the influence of French
Surrealist painter Marcel Duchamp on his creation of Beanworld.
Really! You can read it at his blog.

I
can't really talk about the plot or ecology of the Beanworld without
sounding really convoluted and confusing. Many of the details of how
everything in this world fits together are revealed over the course
of the story. Most of the Beans who inhabit this world appear to be
undifferentiated in appearance, yet each works to serve a function in
their society.

There are a few very specific characters who serve specialized roles. It seems that when the need arises for something new in the system, a new point of view, or skill necessary for the Bean's survival, the world provides. When the series premieres there are only five Beans with idiosyncratic personalities separate from the others (and three of them are inextricably linked, so that really there are only three real individual voices).

Mr.
Spook is the Hero, and in many ways represents the classic Warrior
archetype. The Beans rely on what is essentially a hunter/gatherer
method of survival (though like everything else in this series, that
is an oversimplification). Mr. Spook carries a three pronged fork, a
magic weapon that helps achieve their goals. He leads the troops on
their hunting/gathering expeditions. He is a straight-line thinker
with very little imagination, but his dedication to their survival
comes before any personal gain or glory. The very concepts are
foreign to the Beans.

Professor
Garbanzo is the intellectual of the group and fulfills the archetypal
role of the Magician. She wears the classic Magician's pointy hat,
covered in arcane symbols. In this case, the symbols represent the
actual building blocks of their reality, and it is the Professor's
job to understand how these work to create new inventions from them
that will benefit society. There are only four elements in the
Beanworld, and everything that is not organic is built from them. I
want to point out that Garbanzo is referred to as “she”
throughout the narrative. There are no noticeable differences or
secondary sexual characteristics between the sexes of the Beans, nor,
as we learn later in the series, do they reproduce in a sexual way. Sex only exists as a personal pronoun in this world. I
find it interesting that Marder chose to specify female characters
since the difference in the sexes seems to have no bearing on the
roles they play in society. Equality isn't an issue. It simply is.

Then
there are the three unnamed Beans who collectively form the Boom'R
Band, a group of musicians. Their only job in the collective is to
create music. I think it's wonderful that in a world where
everything develops specifically to serve the needs of the community,
that once food and safety is being taken care of, music is the next
thing that appears. The Boom'R's
earn their keep through their music, and there is never a question of
it's necessity.

I'm reminded of Kokopelli, the flute player that appearsin petroglyphs all over the American Southwest

Which
leads us to Beanish. If there is a central character in Beanworld
(and that's debatable), it is Beanish. One of the earliest story’s
is called “Beanish Breaks Out.” Breaking out is the term the
Beans use to describe when one of them goes from being an
undifferentiated member to the community to finding a specific
identity and role in their society. It is assumed that at some point
Mr. Spook, Professor Garbanzo, and the Boom'R's all broke out as
well.

Beanish
breaks out and becomes an artist. He begins to create pictures from
the four basic elements, creating the “Fabulous Look-See Show”
for the other Beans to enjoy (and in a stroke of genius, it is only
Mr. Spook, the practical straight-line thinker, who just doesn't get
Art. He never questions Beanish's right to create or earn his keep in
this fashion, but like many people who encounter Beanworld for
the first time, he just doesn't get it). I think "Fabulous Look-See Show" is a great way to describe comics, by the way.

Beanish's
story of personal growth becomes a focal point for the series, the
storyline that the reader can most identify with. It is the struggle
any creative person goes through. He has issues with his materials
and discovering how to use them. He questions the value of what he
does. He engages in a personal relationship with his muse, in this
case a physical manifestation that goes by the name of Dreamishness.
Only Beanish knows about her, and he cannot talk about her with
anyone else. The metaphor of this will ring true to any of us who
have had dealings with our own personal muse. The core lesson Beanish
learns, in terms of what he needs to give to his muse, and what he
receives from her, is wonderfully expressed in a world where symbols
have a physical reality. It is both beautiful and true.

The
entire original series is available in two hardcover editions
published by Dark Horse Comics. A couple of years ago, after a long
hiatus, Marder began creating new tales of the Beanworld. A third
volume of new material was released. A new collection, Volume 3.5,
according to the solicitation, is due in June, 2012.

Beanworld
is a challenge. It is not like anything else you have ever read. A
lot of the language used in the dialog is created by Marder, and much
of it can sound unfamiliar and weird, but, like the dialects and
language in the comic strip Pogo
or the novel A Clockwork Orange
(and you've probably never seen those two things referenced together
before), once you get into it there is a poetry and rhythm.
But, if you are interested in comics as a storytelling medium, this
is one of the best examples of how far the format can be pushed. Try
to move beyond the Mr. Spook way of looking at it and try to see the
deeper stories and concepts the symbols are referring to. Be like
Beanish and break out of your habitual ways of seeing.